The project will advance understanding of the transformation of sensory information to motor commands for adaptive behaviors such as tracking, reaching, grasping and steering around obstacles in the natural environment.

A more complete understanding of the computations supporting these vital functions of the nervous system will facilitate treatment and rehabilitation when they fail to develop normally or break down through disease. The echolocating bat will be used as a model system because it exhibits rich but well-defined adaptive motor patterns that indicate changing behavioral states. This interdisiplinary project brings together biology, neural recording telemetry, and control systems in novel and important ways.